And In That Dreaming, Weep
by tielan
Summary: The knowledge shook her like a rag doll, like the long, shuddering breath indrawn after taking a punch to the gut. She was too late.


**And In That Dreaming Weep**

_And in that dreaming weep  
Would man but wake  
From out his haunted sleep_...  
'Turn Back O Man' from _Godspell_

The wind through the mountains was cold and filled with fine grit.

Teyla spat out another mouthful of dust and pressed her back against the bleak rocky edges of the mountain range, ignoring the sharp edges of the stones that bit into her flesh. Her breathing was slow and even, with only the slightest flutter to it to indicate her nervousness.

It was a big risk.

She glanced down at her wrist, checking the timer again. One minute.

Carefully, she looked up, skirting the bright pinpoint lights of the fires around the camp. There was no point in ruining her night vision just to get a look at something she couldn't see anyway. She had a mission to accomplish and people to see free.

If they were still alive.

She'd heard their screams rending the air earlier today, prisoners in pain, under torture. Her fingers had clenched around her gun, and trembled as she stuck the incendiary in the block of C4. _Hold on_, she'd told them silently. _Just hold on until sunset._

Blocking out their cries of agony had been beyond her but, by daylight, so was action. In the day, they'd have no cover to escape. By night, they'd have half a chance. Maybe.

Even half a chance was better than none at all.

The timer vibrated - all the warning she had before the northwestern side of the hill exploded in a burst of flying rock and smoky dust, and the stringent crackle of burning pine filled the air.

With her back against the rock of her hiding place, she heard the sounds of the camp rousing itself and grinned. Even half a chance was made better with a bit of distraction.

As men emerged from their tents and ran towards the blaze, shouting in a language of which she understood only the vaguest part, Teyla flung the hood of the robe over her head and began making her way down the now-forgotten southwestern slope of the hill. It was a painful journey. Muscles gone cold from waiting ached as she made the controlled descent, reining in the instinct to scramble down the slope and run for the tent.

In the robe she'd stolen, she looked much like any other man here. With the hood covering her hair and face, she was just one more body in the camp. And walking boldly across the empty ground, nobody would have imagined that she'd come to get three of her friends out of this place.

Beneath the robe, she could feel the swift pace of her heart, crashing painfully against her chest. Such a big risk, such a slim hope, but she couldn't leave them behind.

The two guards were dealt with easily - a blow to the throat that crushed the windpipe and they were dead men writhing. Not a shot was fired.

But the prisoners...

She stopped at the first cage - metal bars stuck into a rough brick cell. Cold, sick nausea filled her, choking her throat in gag reflex, even as despair washed through her soul - the bitter taste of defeat souring her tongue.

Prisoners? She stared down at the sprawled, still body of Rodney McKay, then to the next cell, to where Ronon lay, dark eyes staring up at nothing at all. And poking out of the cell beyond that...a head that rested against the bars and a hand that extended limply beyond the bars, knuckles trailing in dust.

Blood streaked pale skin, and the angles of their limbs said...

Too late.

The knowledge shook her like a rag doll, like the long, shuddering breath indrawn after taking a punch to the gut.

She was too late.

She forced herself to the end of the row, swallowing hard against the scent of blood and the miasma of despair. A quick crouch in the darkness and a touch of fingers to skin clammy and cold in death only proved what she already knew.

These men weren't prisoners anymore. They were corpses.

Dead. All of them dead.

Outside, shouts roused her from her stupor. She had no time for grief.

Anguish and pain threatened to overwhelm her. She shoved it away, brutally. The mission was scrubbed; escape was the sole remaining objective.

She turned on her heel, disgusted with her superiors who'd said this rescue couldn't be effected and been right, with the captors who'd spared these men nothing, with herself for believing that this mission could be accomplished, alone.

Two strides took her to the body of the first guard.

Her footsteps faltered.

The heavy features of the man had changed. Instead of the olive skin and hawkish nose, the profile was fair and fine-boned, and green eyes gleamed empty beneath dark lashes. _Elizabeth_?

Around her, the world spun dizzyingly, coloured with shock, tinged with pain. It echoed back in her skull, shaking a part of her loose as her eyes were dragged towards the second guard, shorter and stockier.

Frightened, she stepped over the prone body of the Atlantis leader and looked at the second man she had killed.

Not a man any longer. Dark eyes stared up at her, a mirror of her own face, slack-jawed and pale in death, with one limp hand clutching at her throat. _Teyla_...

One hand reached out towards her, and she saw the hand as though from a distance, larger, thicker of wrist - a man's hand, not her own.

Her own wrist lay limp and smooth in his touch as despair screamed through him, like a rusty chainsaw of failure and loss and grief digging into flesh, one agony too many, the burden too heavy.

Teyla shook with the realisation: this was no place in her memory, no part of her history.

Where was she?

_Who_ was she?

Even as she woke, gasping in the dark of the Oamii spring night, Teyla knew.

Everything in the guest room was a dark reddish hue, illuminated by the flame that burned in the thin terracotta pot, and she could clearly see the tangled sheets of the man sleeping in the next bed over.

He made a choking noise, something between a grunt and a gasp of pain. And although the connection between them was broken, Teyla remembered the dream and knew the anguish he was feeling.

Thick rug depressed beneath her feet as she crossed the room and bent over John to shake him lightly. "Colonel--"

She got no further.

He lunged up from the bed, hand striking out at her. She blocked it, catching his wrist, but his momentum carried them both down to the floor, landing hard on the carpet.

Breath gusted out of her as John landed on top of her, his body pinning hers to the floor as her head hit the carpet. It jolted her vision for a moment, and when her sight cleared, she found his face mere inches from hers.

"Teyla?"

Somehow, she found her voice. "Yes, Colonel."

He exhaled slowly. "I thought--" He took a deep breath but didn't move.

Teyla could see his eyes picking out the lines of her face, a visual reassurance that what he had seen in the dream was not true. "It was just a dream."

"I know," John said, but there was still a faint hoarseness in his voice, and he showed no intention of getting up.

After a moment, Teyla shifted a little. It was not that she minded their positions, only that she was concerned that she might begin to like it too much. His arms drew closer together, one hand pressing against her back. "Don't move."

"Colonel--"

"I just need--" He broke off, but she understood what he'd been going to say. Right now, he needed this closeness, a tactile reassurance that what he had seen was not true. His head turned to rest on her shoulder. "Just be still, okay?"

She could do stillness if he needed it, but their positions were...intimate. More intimate than made her comfortable. The carpet, while soft, was not as soft as the bed had been and her landing had been painful. Slowly, making sure he understood that she wasn't telling him to leave, Teyla moved one arm over his shoulder to rest on his back. Beneath her hand, she felt his muscles relax, sensed his fears recede like the tides flowing back on the mainland.

The candle flickered, a visual counterpoint to the aural murmur of the river as it rippled past, out in the garden, the cricket chirping away outside the window - as far removed from the gritty wind and cold rocks of his dream as paradise from a prison.

The Oamii had offered them shelter overnight, an alternative to returning to Atlantis. And the guest-house was large and comfortably appointed, with two rooms of two beds each.

She hoped that Rodney and Ronon had not been woken by their fall to the floor.

All these thoughts ran through her head as she lay with John in her arms, until, at length, he levered himself up on his elbows to look her in the face. "I--" He paused.

For a man rarely without words, he seemed surprisingly shy. Teyla spoke. "Do you dream of it often? Of losing us?"

He tensed, staring at her. "How do you know--?"

"I also saw it," she said. "A camp in the hills and an explosion that you used as cover and distraction."

In the night, it was difficult to see his eyes, and the lamp was behind him, casting his face in shadows. "You saw that? The prison? The guys?"

"Three men in three cells," she said. "You killed two men guarding them, but the prisoners were already dead."

The tension was back in his shoulders, a subtle knotting of his muscles as the memory forced itself to the surface. She felt the shift of his muscles in his back and shoulders, tightening. "Afghanistan."

Teyla knew only the framework of the story. He had gone back into enemy territory for some of his people who had been left behind. The retrieval had been a failure and, for his disobedience, he had ended up assigned to a base in Antarctica. However, his loyalty had brought him to the notice of a General who knew of the Stargates and the Atlantis expedition. It had been that man who gave John the opportunity to redeem himself.

And that had led to Atlantis and Teyla.

On such small things do fate and the future depend.

"Why were you dreaming of it?"

Her eyes were drawn back from the ceiling shadows far above to his face, close to her own and with all the intensity of which he was capable. "I dreamed of a Wraith in the city," she said after a moment. "This may be one more facet of that...ability."

He shifted, his body still resting against hers as he moved his weight onto one elbow, and lifted his hand to push back her hair. His thumb ran over her cheek, gentle. "Teyla, what you saw..."

"It was a dream."

John shook his head. "No." The dim light caught at the strands of his hair as he moved. "_This_ is a dream," his voice was barely audible in the midnight quiet as he ran his thumb across her skin again.

He meant more than them, lying on the floor of the Oamii guesthouse. He meant his team, Atlantis, the people he cared about, who were his responsibility and his friends. Beneath the man who fought so hard to protect his people was a man who feared losing the people of whom he'd made his family.

_This is a dream,_ Teyla thought. _And sometimes he wonders when he will awaken..._

There was more to it than that, but it was lost as she felt his lips warm and hungry against her throat.

Teyla tensed and he felt it. How could he not when his body pressed her down into the floor? He was warm and solid, a close friend and team-mate, but this kiss - like the other one - was unexpected.

He lifted his mouth from hers. "Teyla..."

On the edges of her consciousness, the awareness of his need pressed upon her. She had felt this before, moments when she was among her team-mates and their thoughts pressed in on her, so close it was stifling. It was nothing so clear as words or images, nothing more than the faintest insight into their state of mind.

Teyla could guess at the delineation between family and lovers in John's mind. The women he'd slept with since coming to Pegasus had been lovers - women to whom he was attracted and with whom there need be no second thoughts about intercourse. Safe women.

The women of the Atlantis expedition - including Teyla herself - were not 'lovers.' They were his family - his friends, his responsibility, his duty - the people to whom he gave the very best of himself.

And yet John wanted this. He _needed_ this of her.

Death's closeness bred life's desire.

And the Colonel had dreamed of more death than he could bear alone.

Almost of their own volition, Teyla's hands slid up his back and into his hair, pulling his head down to hers. It was her decision, her willingness, her acceptance of his need. He was not alone and he need not bear the memory of failure and loss alone - she would not leave him to face that alone.

This time, the kiss lasted long enough to leave her gasping for air, and even when she panted for breath, his mouth continued along her jaw, down her throat, over her tingling skin, leaving the soft flush of desire with his touch.

She ran her fingers down his spine to the base of his shirt, then slipped her hand beneath it. His skin was hot and slightly damp, and she dragged her hand up his back, taking his shirt with it - an exercise that was made difficult by their positions, and the fact that one of his hands was pushing up the hem of her own top. It paused beneath her breast as he raised himself on the other arm. "Teyla?"

"Yes." She answered to both her name and the question he hadn't voiced, and he bent to kiss her again, more urgently now, as though desire pricked him deeper.

Material dragged across skin as she pulled off his shirt, and Teyla ran a hand down the line of his throat and over the lightly-defined muscles of his chest. He shivered, and she saw his eyes watching her as her hands measured the breadth of his body, brushing his flesh with her fingers. Then his fingers reached for the buttons of her top, and he slipped them open, his fingers trailing inside to the curve of her breasts.

There was no particular delicacy to John's caresses, but at this moment in the darkness, Teyla needed little.

She shifted beneath his body, pressing up against him. John made a noise in his throat like a groan, and bent over her again, cutting off breath and thought with his mouth and the way his hips moved against her.

Taste and touch, flavour and savour, their hands and mouths spoke in a language that needed no translation. His breathing rasped beneath the song of the cricket as her lips brushed over his skin, the salt of sweat, the sweetness of his flesh, and her own sensual hunger as he pulled her up and fastened his mouth on hers.

Possession was a moment of surprise, the thick, full feel of him pressing into her body and the cry she gave at the pleasure - and, yes, the discomfort of it, too.

John was panting with desire, with the effort of keeping himself still, of not pushing her down to the floor and thrusting into her again and again - so she sensed. But she could feel the tension in his arms, in his belly, in his neck, the straining hunger that demanded movement and satisfaction in movement. He was waiting for her approval, for her assent.

So she moved and gave her consent, sliding beneath him, letting flesh do what words could not, and the noise he made was somewhere between laughter and a groan as he took her mouth. "If I'm dreaming, don't let me wake up."

The words were nothing more than a faint blur at the edge of her hearing. The throb of blood in her veins was too loud, the pulse between her thighs too fierce; and both throb and pulse worked an arrhythmic counterpoint to his thrusts into her body.

Climax came soon and easily. She had never lacked the ability to gain pleasure in bed, whomever her partner.

And this was John.

_Don't let me wake up._

Teyla held him in her arms as he shivered with pleasure and release. His mouth drank deeply of her as desire eased back and left them both trembling in the warm shadows of the floor.

As breath and sense returned, so too were thought and reason restored.

John was friend and trusted. Now he was her lover, also, and Teyla couldn't begin to imagine how things might change between them. She was not sure she wanted things to change.

But there was no stopping it as he lifted himself up on one elbow to look down into her face, and brush back the damp strands of her hair that curled around her cheeks. An oddly tender gesture for him - he was not a man given to intimate contact.

"You do not dream now, John," she murmured, meeting his gaze. She wanted to avoid his look, to pass by the acknowledgement of what had happened between them. Teyla forced the fear back and looked him in the eye.

"I know," he said, and the possessiveness in his look warmed her belly, even as his finger traced down her throat and across her shoulder. "Thank you." He bent to touch his mouth to hers with delicate care.

The kiss began light.

Teyla moved her mouth across his in response, and was startled when he leaned into it, tilting his head to get better access to her lips.

Time slowed, crawling sluggishly between them as they tasted and drank, hands framing faces, bodies shifting to find a comfortable position on the floor.

Somewhere, outside the guest-house, a bird sang out its waking song.

It roused them both. John broke away, lifting his head to look back over his shoulder at the window and the faintest traces of dawn that touched the sky. Teyla propped herself up on one arm, enjoying the feel of her nipple brushing his chest and the way he turned back to look at her.

She reached one hand out to trace the line of his forehead, the fierce arch of his bows, the rough stubble that was already growing across his chin and cheeks - a tenderness that she couldn't quite hold back. He was not emotional, any more than she, but that was just one more facet of their similarities.

It was their similarities that bound them together as team-mates, as much as need and desire had bound them together as lovers.

"So," he murmured. "Your place or mine?" Teyla frowned, not understanding the reference, and he sighed. "Earth joke."

He sat up, scrubbing a hand through the darker shadows of his hair, and she watched him for a moment, admiring the lean lines of his body. The air was a little cool on her skin, and she leaned over for her clothing, discarded just beyond arm's reach.

The kiss landed on her shoulder and she paused. Another landed on the lower curve of her breast, another brushed low across her belly, and his hands circled her waist. She regarded him with some astonishment - and a little apprehension. "Will you be this affectionate in daylight?"

John looked at her and the darkness disguised neither heat nor humour. "You'd kick my ass if I tried." His kiss dabbed the corner of her mouth and tasted faintly bittersweet when she licked her lips. "You're safe, Teyla."

"Our lives are not safe," she replied, watching the shadows of his face. "You fear to lose us." It was an abrupt transition, but one that she could feel haunting him still.

"Would you prefer it if I didn't?"

She held his gaze. "Loss is the nature of life."

"Teyla, you've only known loss against the Wraith," he said fiercely. "You're conditioned to accept it because you couldn't do anything about it before we arrived in Pegasus. I'm _not_ going to accept it."

And he never would.

In some things they were much the same, and yet in others... Teyla sighed and offered what warning she dared. "No-one dreams forever, John."

Sooner or later, luck had to run out. John knew it as well as she. But their individual willingness to believe it differentiated them. Teyla hoped he was able to accept that.

It seemed he was, for he leaned over until his lips hovered over hers. "Can I at least dream this until morning?"

The answer she gave him held no words.

And in the morning, when their hosts came to fetch them from the guest house, there was nothing to signify that they had done anything other than sleep and dream.

- **fin** -

**FEEDBACK**: is a wonderful, wonderful thing._  
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